OK – I admit it – I’m a
fanatical fan of Google. I love their search
engine. I love their Toolbar with all the neat features, including the
translation of English words into Spanish (I’m trying to learn more Spanish
words). I even love their Gmail with over 2 ½ gigabytes of storage space.
I love their maps where you can “travel” to and zoom in on any city in the
United States. I love their Froogle. I love I’m Feeling Lucky. I love their
news headlines. I love their phonebook. I love their site search. I love
their Google Answers. I love Google Local….

OK…..ENOUGH
- ENOUGH!!!

(And – NO – I don’t own
any stock in Google – although I wish I had bought some when it was initially
offered at $85 a share – it has more than tripled)

Well, I just got something
else to love! The Google Desktop 2 search tool. Google has
just released their newest version of this great FREE software. It's worth
taking a look at.

The New Google Desktop
2 search tool has a newfeature from
Google that adds a strip on the right (or left) side of your desktop. The strip
is filled with all kinds of information panels, like,

news headlines,

Web Clips of blogs or news
sites (you can specify or add your own),

a scratch pad to jot
little “to do” reminders,

a slide show of photos
from any photos folder on your computer,

a Quick View of favorites
or recently used websites,

a What’s Hot plug-in
keeping you up on current trends on the web,

the current local weather
for your location,

stock quotes,

preview or read emails,

launch applications by
typing the first few letters of the application name.

And there’s more. You can add
other Google or 3rdpartyplug-ins for additional sidebar options.
There’s some really neat ones already available.

BUT – the
best part of this new Google Desktop Search may be the ability to searchyourcomputer hard drive for files or emails
or websites. This search works similar to the Windows search feature but it is
way better and way faster. The Desktop Search application requires the
indexing of all files, emails, and websites store on your hard drive.
This may take a several hours, so plan to install this when you
can leave your computer alone for a while to complete the indexing. You will
love the speed and results you get when searching for that long lost email or
file on your computer (and without the pain of having to use the slow,
inefficient Windows Search).

There are several
options in the way you can view the Google Desktop 2.

You can choose to choose
to Autohide the side bar. This is useful if you don’t want
the sidebar always visible and using up valuable desktop space.

You can choose the
Deskbar which will minimize the side bar to the Task Bar – then
just click on it to get it back to the right hand panel.

You can choose the very
tiny FloatingDeskbar which you can then
click on to maximize the side bar to the right panel.

OK – if you want to
learn more or give this a try, here are some links.